He sighs, a rush of air through his nose. “I think it’s awful, actually. I talked to Chard about it once. He said . . . Well, basically, imagine the hardest comedown from the most amazing drug you could take. They go to sleep thinking they have their whole lives ahead of them. Then they open their eyes, and it’s fifty years later. That’s why Chard’s never done it.” He pauses, chews his lip. “That’s why I’ll never do it.”

  “You don’t think the high is worth the comedown?”

  Nick shakes his head. “I think it’s like anything else. The only way to get over the comedown is to get the high again. And Camp is a little more expensive than heroin.” He smirks.

  Rain patters on the metal roof over their heads. The smell of it through the window is earthy and sweet. It’s almost time for the lunch bell to ring. Soon, in another minute or two, they will have to get up and put their dusty T-shirts back on, go out to face their weird lives again. Sam thinks over what he said. Something is stuck in her brain like food in her teeth; she picks at it curiously. “So,” she begins, then falters. She doesn’t want to push him too far. “Never mind.”

  “No, what is it?” He rolls and turns a hard gaze over her. One hand on her hip tugs her closer. The thought suddenly strikes Sam that if they were to compare hands, she might come out on top. He is older than her, but shyer, colder, slower to act. Maybe that’s why she feels so bold with him—between the two of them, she might be the one holding all the cards, after all.

  “You said they go to sleep. Is that how it happens? After Camp, I mean?”

  A few pattering seconds pass before he responds. “You mean, how do they get back to their bodies?”

  “Yeah.”

  Nick’s eyes shift. He squirms against the cushion. “I don’t know that much. But there’s one easy way to do it, right? I don’t know how, exactly, but I know it’s quick and painless. And they don’t remember it when they wake up.”

  Sam nods. She thinks back to Richard Byron on the picnic bench a few days ago, laughing at her. No one is killing children here. Her curiosity drives on. She nods toward the cabin floor, where the little black tube lies, cold and ominous, next to their clothes and radios. “What’s that thing on your keychain?”

  He looks pained. His grip on her body tightens. “You know, don’t you?”

  She doesn’t say anything. She wants him to elaborate.

  Nick sighs. “They’re not people. You know that. They’re not really alive. If something were to happen, like with Max on the horse, but worse . . . we can’t just let them suffer. We have to send them back.”

  “What about Poppy?” Sam asks before she can stop herself. “What if something bad happens to her?”

  Days have gone by, and Poppy Warbler is still very much her usual self. A train wreck, but a living one. Nothing has changed, at least on the surface. If no one ever told her Poppy Warbler is dead, Sam would have no idea. That doesn’t change the fact that she cannot stop thinking about it. She watches Poppy obsessively. Compulsively, she needs to keep an eye on her, to put a hand on her head, on her little round belly; to make sure she is here, she is real.

  “Something bad already did happen to her, Sam.” Nick seems to have reached his limit on answering questions. He sits up on the futon and runs his hand through his hair, checks the rain through the window. “There’s nothing we can do about that.”

  Sam sits up, too. “Is there not?”

  “No.” His sharp eyes widen. The balance between them totters and then flips again, and Sam is looking upward. Nick reaches for his T-shirt. “There’s not.”

  Logan

  The rain comes out of nowhere, just before the start of morning period. After a little confusion and reshuffling of the schedule, the Ravens are sent to crafts with the Sparrows instead of water skiing. They sit in the musty-smelling crafts shack and squish wet clay between their fingers, listening to the plunks and pitter-patter outside. Anxiety over the dance being cancelled floats like static on the air.

  The cabin is divided. Ever since Logan kissed Hugo Baker, Donna, Joy and Mei refuse to talk to her. The rest of group is on Logan’s side. This is all very new and exciting—more exciting than the kiss itself, which, Logan thinks, was hardly worth the hype. She has never been the center of any kind of drama. Out loud, she says she hates all the fighting and wishes everyone could get along, but inwardly she is glowing.

  “What are you going to wear?” Liz asks.

  Logan shrugs, focused on her weaving. Her blue-and-gold X-pattern bracelet is almost finished. She told everyone, just loud enough for Donna and the others to hear, that she will give it to Hugo today. “I don’t know. Do you think we should all be boys?”

  “Screw that.” Milly slams a fist into her clay ball, splattering pasty droplets. “I’m going as a man.”

  Liz laughs. “Ooh, you’re right. Let’s get all the ties from down at campfire.”

  “And draw on beards!”

  “And chest hair!” Milly and Liz giggle and squirm on their stools.

  Logan finishes her stitch and holds the bracelet up for them to see. “What do you guys think?” she asks loudly. “Is that long enough for his wrist?”

  Liz coos over the bracelet, but Milly sees what Logan is doing. She shoots her a hard look—knock it off, her face says. Logan lowers the bracelet but not her voice. Milly doesn’t know anything about boys and bracelets, anyway.

  The rain lets up by lunchtime, and the Capture the Flag game is on. The Ravens braid each other’s hair and draw thick black lines on their cheeks with Sadie’s eyeliner. They cuff the sleeves of their T-shirts, like boys, and giggle as they flex and pose in the mirror. The battlefield is set up behind the ropes course, a flat stretch of forest divided into two sides by a line scuffed through the pine needles. Red T-shirts are tied to stumps on either side, and jails are marked off with sticks.

  Rosie and Sam captain the girls’ team and Elias and Jeremy lead the boys. They huddle up, chanting and cheering and thumping their chests across the line. Pudgy little Poppy, the Hummingbird, wild-haired and missing both front teeth, growls and screeches like a goblin at the boys.

  Sam waves her arms to bring their huddle in tighter. “Let’s wreck these guys,” she says in a mean whisper.

  Rosie crouches in front of them. “Remember, ladies: anything boys think they can do, girls do it better.”

  “Girls do it better,” Sam repeats.

  They chant back: “Girls do it better!”

  The sky is gray, the air is humid, and the light beneath the pines is dim and serious. They’re testing the speakers for the dance back at the bell tower; drumbeats thunder through the trees. The game begins with a shout from Rosie, and the boys and girls take off running. Logan can’t remember ever taking a game so seriously. It’s all-out warfare, and she wants to win. At one point she sneaks deep enough behind enemy lines to see the boys’ flag. Exhilarated, she catches her breath, waits for her moment, then leaps from her cover and sets off at a sprint. She is nearing the flag, can almost touch it, and then—whack! She tumbles to the dirt.

  Logan looks up from her back and shoves her glasses into place to see who tagged her. It’s Hugo. He laughs as he bends down to help her up. There is her bracelet, the newest addition to the collection on his wrists. “I’m sorry!” he says. He doesn’t look sorry.

  Across the playing field, the counselors are distracted. Rosie has tackled Elias to the ground. Caught up in the violence, Logan smacks his hand away. She helps herself to her feet and marches herself to jail, fuming.

  Now she is determined to win. Free from jail and back on their own side, she, Milly, and Rosie plot out a new strategy. The clouds overhead have grown heavier quickly; it looks like the rain is on its way back. When the drops start to fall, they smear the paint on the campers’ cheeks and blur the dividing line drawn in the dirt. The needle-coated ground grows slick.

  Logan sneaks behind the trees again. Safely hidden on the boys’ side, she signals to Milly and Rosie through the rain. They lead a charge of girls across the line, shouting fearfully. With the boys distracted, Logan bolts for the flag.

  She has it in her grasp. Cold raindrops splatter the lenses of her glasses. Logan sprints, faster than she has ever run in her life. Her heart thrums, pumping pure adrenaline.

  “Hey, up there!” She hears the call and the stampede of feet behind her. She is nearly there. As she sprints the last few feet, she glances to her side, up the hill.

  Logan’s lenses are smeared with water and flecks of dirt. Just like the night she looked out the infirmary window, a distinctive shape between the trees catches her eye: a shadow, long and limby, peering at her through the rainy haze and branches. A high fear strikes her heart. As she squints to pin the figure down, she stumbles and falls, face-first into a carpet of wet needles and leaves. Her glasses go flying. Gleeful shouts roar up around her—she made it across the line.

  The girls’ team barrels in on her. It’s all wet hugs and hair tousles and squeals. Logan holds the flag proudly over her head. For a second, she glances distractedly up the hill, searching through the pine trunks—but there is nothing there. It was just a trick of the rain and shadows. She waves the red T-shirt in the air and hollers: “Girls do it better!”

  Even in all the excitement of her victory, Logan can’t help but notice something else weird on the border of her attention. Poppy has been knocked down by a bigger boy. She lies in the dirt, her body shaking with what looks like tears. Before anyone else can reach her, Sam comes tearing away from the crowd of girls. She slides to her knees at Poppy’s side and picks her up. Poppy flops like a doll in her arms. She is laughing, not crying—the full-bodied, breathless cackle of a little kid. It’s strange, Logan thinks, that Poppy’s counselor doesn’t laugh with her, or even smile. She hugs her tight and throws Rosie a dark look over her head. The scene doesn’t make any sense to Logan, but she has no more than a few seconds to consider it before the game is back on. The flag is replaced, the line redrawn, and another round begins.

  In the end, it’s a draw: two captures for the boys and two for the girls. The rain stops and the clouds finally clear. Muddy and scraped, still trembling with fury, they leave the battlefield for dinner. Loud and exaggerated recaps can be heard from every table.

  The bell tower is strung with twinkle lights and streamers for the dance. Music booms from massive speakers set up on the hillside. Logan, Liz and Milly pilfer baggy shirts and ties from the props closet behind the campfire stage. They draw on smudgy mustaches with the same eyeliner pen they used for the game.

  Hugo turns up in a strapless red ball gown. “Borrowed it from Elias,” he tells them, adjusting the too-big bosom. It keeps slipping down below his nipples.

  Before Logan can figure out what she is supposed to say to Hugo, he disappears—with Milly. They sink into the crowd of bouncing kids and Logan can’t find them. She ends up standing next to Max at the snack table. He isn’t wearing a costume, just his usual shorts and blue T-shirt and a little pink bow clipped in his hair. Katie put it there, he explains.

  “Where’d they go?” Max shouts over the music. Logan looks sideways to see him holding out a popsicle for her. She shakes her head.

  “I don’t know.” After an awkward pause, she looks at him again. She should apologize for making him climb the ladder, she thinks. Even if he did embarrass her first. “Hey, listen . . .”

  Max fumbles the popsicle he is unwrapping as he turns to her. She doesn’t have time to finish her thought, though, before Hugo and Milly are back. They both smile mischievously; they look like thieves with pockets full of treasure. They have a plan. “You guys want to go see something?” Milly whispers.

  This plan is different, not like freeing the horse. It’s worse. They want to break the rules just to break the rules. Logan’s heart flutters nervously. She doesn’t really have a choice. Being friends with Milly means jogging to catch up or staying behind—and she doesn’t want to stay behind. Not if Milly is taking Hugo with her. Max, still holding two popsicles, one unwrapped, agrees with a silent nod.

  They creep off at the start of a loud pop song. The counselors are standing on the benches, tossing their arms around and shouting the lyrics, not seeing anyone but each other. Sneaking through the dark is as thrilling as sneaking through the trees into the boys’ territory. Hugo trips over his ball gown and the rest of them stifle their giggles behind their hands. Milly murmurs about bears and ghosts lurking in the moonlight. They enter the barn through the wide doors and bumble for the light switch, grunting and stepping on each other’s toes. At last Hugo finds it. With a great buzz, industrial light bulbs overhead flicker to life, painting the place in bright, warm yellow. The goats shout in surprise.

  “Hey, Socrates!”

  “Milly, shut up!”

  “It’s all right,” says Hugo in his full speaking voice. “No one’s going to hear us down here.” He dances across the barn floor, shaking his long dress and wiggling his eyebrows at them. “Come on. Last one’s got to chug a full one.”

  Logan climbs the ladder behind the rest of them. It’s higher than it looks, and scary—but that is hardly justification for being left behind. As soon as her head pokes through the doorway, her heart sinks. The place is awfully disappointing: a dusty attic that looks a lot like her grandparents’ garage. There is no pool table or soda machine, just some old couches and the stink of feet. A rope ladder dangles in the center of the room, leading up into the rafters. Grown-up spaces, like kissing, must not live up to all the mystery and whispers.

  Milly is already at the fridge. She tugs the handle delicately, an explorer at the door to an ancient tomb.

  “It’s a different kind than it was last time,” Max says, awed, peering over her shoulder.

  “That was only, like, two days ago. Did they drink it all?”

  “They must be alcoholics.”

  Hugo reaches into the fridge. “Here, Maxie, catch!” He tosses a can behind his back at Max, who misses it. It falls to the floor with a solid thump. The can spins and hisses and a fountain of beer sprays upward. Hugo laughs.

  “Hugo!” Max cries. He leaps back from the sticky spray. The bow slips from his hair.

  “Relax.” Hugo tugs at his dress, which has slipped from his chest again. “They won’t know it was us.”

  “Who are they going to think it was?” Logan asks.

  He shrugs. “A ghost. Who cares?”

  They open two cans and sit on the dusty floor, passing them back and forth. Beer, it turns out, tastes like aluminum and dirty straw. Logan grimaces and takes little sips, wondering worriedly what it will feel like to be drunk. Her eyeliner mustache leaves black smudges on the rim of the can.

  “You know what?” Hugo smacks his lips. He sits with his legs spread wide, so they can see right up the red dress. He is wearing shorts, Logan sees, then quickly looks away before anyone can accuse her of staring. “They’re not just alcoholics. They’re all sex addicts, too.”

  “Sex addicts?” Milly snickers. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I mean, all the counselors are doing it. With each other. All the time.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “You know what we found in Elias’s locker?” Hugo shifts his weight to his knees, leaning forward to reveal something very important. “A condom. If he’s just leaving them around, that means he probably uses lots of them.”

  Logan waits until Hugo’s attention is diverted by the beer before she mouths to Milly: What’s a condom?

  I don’t know, Milly mouths back. They share a shrug.

  When both cans are drained, they start to get sillier. Hugo stands to waltz around the room, humming to himself. Milly fixes the bow in Max’s hair. All of them are red-faced and laughing, but Logan waits, still, for something to happen to her. Her mouth tastes terrible, and she is getting steadily more nervous by the second. She wonders if she is the only one worried about getting caught. As if he can read her mind, Max suddenly pauses in the middle of his sentence. Panic overtakes his expression. He presses a finger to his lips and gestures downward.

  Someone is coming into the barn. Logan hears footsteps and two adult voices, loud and snappy.

  “Hide!” Hugo heads for the rope ladder in the middle of the room. Max dives for cover behind the couch against the farthest wall, Milly after him. Logan jumps to her feet. She hesitates, stutter-steps, then follows Hugo up the swaying ladder. He catches her arm and helps her up.

  They are in a dark crawlspace, on a squishy nest of unrolled sleeping bags surrounded by piles of boxes. It smells like leather and rubber and dirt. Logan lies down flat on her back beside Hugo, listening, struggling to hold her breath in check. The counselors are climbing into the loft. Their words become clear as they reach the top of the ladder, first one, then the other.

  “Would you just listen to me?”

  Hugo’s hand reaches out to Logan’s shoulder. “That’s Elias,” he breathes.

  “I am listening to you,” says the other, higher voice. Logan recognizes the lilt of it—Rosie. “And I’m telling you, you’re wrong.”

  “How can you say that? You don’t have proof. No one has proof.”

  “I don’t need proof. He’s rich, he’s white, he’s powerful. He’s guilty.”

  “That is so biased. I mean, shit, that’s just prejudiced!”

  “That’s not how prejudice works, idiot.”

  Logan hears the tinny clank of a can kicked across the floor. She winces. The counselors’ argument pauses, their voices soften. They start debating who might have left the beer on the ground.

  In the dim of the crawlspace, Hugo’s hand has shifted from one shoulder to the other so that his bare arm stretches all the way across her chest. She turns her head slowly, careful not to crinkle the sleeping bag beneath them. He is on his side, looking at her.